SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador — Heavy rains pounded Central America for a fourth day yesterday, pushing rivers over their banks, flooding communities and unleashing at least two deadly mudslides as the region's death toll surpassed 150.

Hurricane Stan, which had helped spawn rainstorms in Central America, weakened to a depression over the southern state of Oaxaca yesterday, a day after making landfall along Mexico's Gulf coast. But punishing rains continued in parts of Central America and southern Mexico.

In Guatemala, a mudslide near the internationally popular tourist destination of Lake Atitlán, about 60 miles west of the capital, Guatemala City, buried several houses.

The death toll in Guatemala alone is at least 79, and the total number of confirmed victims to more than 150 throughout the region.

Flooding in scores of Guatemalan communities forced the evacuation of more than 6,000 residents. Nearly all of the country's rivers overflowed, while landslides and fallen trees blocked at least 30 roadways. Most of the victims were killed in landslides, national disaster-agency officials said.

In El Salvador, at least 62 people were killed by four days of mudslides and flooding. More than 16,700 Salvadorans had fled their homes for 167 shelters nationwide.

Among those evacuated were residents of Santa Tecla, outside San Salvador, where a strong earthquake caused a massive landslide in January 2001. Officials have worried the mountain running alongside the neighborhood might collapse again with heavy rains or another quake.

Nine people died in storm-related storms in Nicaragua, including six migrants believed to be Ecuadoreans killed in a boat wreck. Four deaths were reported in Honduras and one in Costa Rica.

In the Chiapas city of Tapachula, near Mexico's border with Guatemala, three people were killed when an overflowing river roared through the city, also carrying homes of wood and metal, civil-protection officials said yesterday. Three other Chiapas residents were confirmed dead, as flooding forced hundreds of evacuations.

Tapachula was largely cut off from surrounding areas as major highways, roads and bridges were left under water.

Civil-protection authorities in the state of Veracruz, which took a direct hit from the hurricane, reported one death and seven injuries. And witnesses said a man was electrocuted as he helped evacuation efforts in the city of Veracruz.

At least 9,000 people woke up in shelters in Veracruz yesterday morning and about 38,000 people had been evacuated from their homes throughout the state, officials said.

The nationally owned oil monopoly Petróleos Mexicanos, or Pemex, said Tuesday that the hurricane disrupted an unspecified amount of oil production for at least a day. The company's three Gulf coast crude-oil loading ports reopened yesterday.